The Over 21 Rent Heads

dead zone!

2006-02-13T21:54:43Z

it seems as though entries have been pretty sparse over on this board, and thusly, I'll take it upon myself to get things warmed up a bit.

How are you feeling about the fact that the movie has seemingly made far too many teenagers/young adults absolutely insane? It seems as though they've decided that they're die hard rent heads just because they paid nine dollars to see the movie once. It's actually driving me crazy. I feel like shouting, "Why don't you sleep on the street with the temperatures hovering below zero before waxing on an on about how much rent has changed your life!"

Or. I could be entirely wrong, and people actually like what sensationalism has caused.

thoughts?

adultrent @ 2006-01-22T14:14:00

2006-01-22T19:14:40Z

Check out rent_newengland.

For fans of Rent that live in the New England area to get to know each other, make friends, plan on get togethers, etc.

forget regret or life is yours to miss..

2005-12-15T04:32:22Z

hey guys..
i'm new here.. just joined. my name's daile, (i'm a girl!) and i'm 21..
i've never had the opportunity to see Rent (or anything else for that matter) on Broadway, but I've seen the movie twice so far, and I listen to the soundtrack at least three times a day. i've been told i'm a ~~little bit~~ way beyond ~~obsessed~~ help. and also that i sing maureen and angel's parts very well. *beams*

but er, anyway.. i wanted to share a link, for anyone who doesn't know about it. this great little site that has screen caps and personal photos and pretty much anything Rent you might be looking for:

http://www.forget-regret.net/

it's amazing. anyway, i hope to make some friends here, seeing as my best friend hasn't seen rent and my fiance, well.. she hated it. (she's usually so smart, i don't know what happened here..)

love
daile

Chris Columbus- RENT

2005-11-13T21:06:23Z

hey guys, I don't know how many of you have read this interview-- it's great!

Playbill.com with Rent's director...
the most interesting thing to me:

"I thought about the possibility of making it into a film. But I had heard at the time, I think that it might have been Martin Scorsese, was involved, so obviously I'm not going to get in the way of that. And, then I heard later on that Spike Lee was involved. ... I always knew I wanted to be involved with it in some way if it was still available. I found out that it was going to NBC as a miniseries. I immediately acted upon that and said, "I don't want this thing to become homogenized in a TV version of Rent.""

Oh, and Daphne Ruben-Vega was pregnant, not too old looking, like I had thought previously.

read the whole interview here!

[x-posted]

adultrent @ 2005-10-26T13:15:00

2005-10-26T17:16:51Z

I know someone (moo....something or other) posted this link on the rent or rent_the_movie communities (though that's not where I originally saw the link, credit must be given to Lea for being awesome), but I thought I'd put it here since not everyone has those communities on their friends lists.

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/stills.php?id=1384&page=1

w00t w00t.

Allow me to direct your attention to the picture of Rosario. Yeah.

Article from the next issue of the New Yorker.

2005-10-26T14:02:50Z

Theater
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Sultry Idina Menzel heads back downtown and leaves her teenybopper fans behind.

By Boris Kachka

(Photo credit: Tim Richardson)

It’s weird to be looked up to by little girls,” says Idina Menzel. We’re sitting at a cafeteria table in the cavernous brass-and-chrome lobby of the Public Theater. It’s the week before previews for her latest musical vehicle, Michael John LaChuisa’s See What I Wanna See, and Menzel is describing her fan base—which features an awfully high proportion of preteens for a self-described “edgy little rocker girl.”

The adoration of the Hilary Duff set arrived with Menzel’s best-known role: a Tony-winning turn as the bright-green teen witch Elphaba in the Broadway smash Wicked. But that audience—the Long Island teenyboppers wearing I ♥ IDINA T-shirts who saw so much of themselves in her ugly-duckling character—might be thrown by her turn at the Public, where she plays three rather adult characters: a kimono-clad femme fatale, a dangerous moll, and a coke-addicted actress. So Menzel made an unusual request for the downtown theater: a notice in front of the theater that read NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 13.

It’s peculiarly appropriate that a Syosset girl who began her career on the Long Island bar mitzvah circuit is, at 34, preparing to give the Public’s first PG-13 performance (though the notice was later changed to cut the specific age reference). Yet her fan base puts her in an odd position. “I want to set a really good example, but I’m not the most innocent person,” she says, accidentally channeling Britney Spears. “I’m a little crass. But I just have to be myself.”

Menzel’s theatrical breakthrough was a very grown-up performance as a louche bisexual in Rent. But theatergoers know her best as that ubiquitous witch who belted out technically flawless pop ballads. They may also know about the full-blown critical backlash against her singing style (and, perhaps, her fan demographic)—most notable in critic Ben Brantley’s New York Times rant against the American Idol-ization of the Broadway musical. The popular spoof Forbidden Broadway even features a Menzel imitator belting out, “I am the loudest witch in Oz / And no one’s gonna turn my volume down!”

Menzel bristles at the criticism. “I actually think Kelly Clarkson is extremely talented,” she says. Declining to address Brantley specifically, she does say that “because Wicked had a big budget, people knock it. If it had the same songs but we did it downtown in a little dark theater and I was standing on a chair,” the reviews might have come out differently. Besides, she has that downtown pedigree. “People forget where Rent came from,” she says. “I sing a duet to my gay lover, who’s black! I mean, come on!”

Well, she’s downtown now—working on an experimental musical created by one of theater’s most stubbornly anti-populist musical playwrights. (Menzel is also recording a second solo album and stars in the movie of Rent, out in November.) “I just wanted to challenge myself,” she says, predictably, but adds something else. “I want to work with Michael John because I feel like people don’t give me enough credit for my training.”

Her training began informally on Long Island, where Menzel (born Mentzel) was a classic diva in the making—a musical-obsessed girl longing to act, sing, and flee the suburbs. The soundtrack to Barbra Streisand’s A Star Is Born was the first album Menzel owned. “My grandmother took me to see that in the movie theater,” she says. “I know it’s not cool; I should say a Bob Dylan record or something.” But her pajama-salesman father and therapist mother didn’t want to raise a child star, and she had to settle for school productions.

At 15, Menzel found her way out: She became a wedding and bar mitzvah singer. Passing for 18, “I’d drive myself illegally with my junior license to the Temple Beth Shalom ballroom and work with all these older men. I grew up kind of fast. I had to come in with this huge repertoire.” Her precociously sexy, exotic look—doe eyes, full lips, aggressively jutting jaw—had to have helped.

By the time she graduated from NYU’s drama program, Menzel had outgrown the wedding circuit and was focusing on downtown rock gigs. Auditions for a theatrical career had become almost an afterthought by 1995, when Jonathan Larson picked Menzel for his downtown rock musical about East Village squatters coping with aids, drugs, and gentrification. When he died the night before the show’s opening, Rent’s mythology was born: the scrappy posthumous rock opera that would take over the world. Rent was also where Menzel met her husband, Taye Diggs, who’s since become the show’s most successful alumnus.

But while Diggs scored role after role, Menzel hit a rut. One record label dropped her after her EP failed to sell. She and Diggs were married in Jamaica by the country’s official rabbi, to generous tabloid coverage—but Diggs’s name would always come first. “I’d walk down the red carpet with Taye and nobody knew who I am; they’d push me aside,” she says.

Then came Wicked, which made her a household name (at least if your household made regular visits to TKTS). And her harrowing final week cemented her diva status. The day before Menzel’s swan song, she cracked a rib falling through a trap door. Unable to perform on her last day, she made a curtain call in a tracksuit to a standing, screaming ovation.
“I’d drive myself illegally to the Temple Beth Shalom ballroom and work with these older men. I grew up kind of fast.”

One of her more surprising fans was Michael John LaChuisa. Having railed publicly against unimaginative pop musicals, you wouldn’t expect him to replace his show’s original star, the classically trained Audra McDonald (who left to do a TV show), with a power-pop belter. “I’m a classicist,” acknowledges LaChuisa, “and she comes from a rock background.” But for him, there was a bottom line: “When it came to looking for someone young, who can sing the bejesus out of my stuff, and who can act, and who can be beautiful and sexy and has magnetism, I don’t know of anyone else but Idina Menzel.”

Her reputation as a belter, he says, is overblown. “At first she was shy about the colors in her voice. She became famous for her high belt, and I use that in the show—I’d be foolish not to—but she’s got jazz, she’s got folk, she’s got a degree of classical soprano in her voice. Each of the characters goes through a certain transformation, so I figure, use it all.”

Both LaChuisa and Menzel cite a basic premise of musical theater, and one that neatly sidesteps her tentative acting: Character equals voice. “A good actor for film knows what to do during the close-ups,” says LaChuisa, “and in musical theater, the song is the close-up.”

LaChuisa’s instincts were spot-on. Menzel carries his wildly diverse tunes beautifully, adding emotional notes to a cerebral libretto without blowing out the little theater’s footlights.

It’s a good thing, because she’s got even more intimate spaces in mind. In honing her solo cabaret act, Menzel has been carefully watching Bette Midler’s shows. “She came out and she’d sing Janis Joplin style, just blood from the vocal cords, and then she’d do ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,’ and the next thing you know she’d come out in a wheelchair in a mermaid costume, and then do stand-up. I like that. Everybody in this business wants you to not confuse people. She doesn’t care.”

No one doubts that she’d be a crowd-pleaser in a one-woman show. But what kind of crowd would it be? “There are different clubs in the theater world,” she concedes. “Has Sondheim asked me to be in a show? No. Would I love that? Yes. Maybe he’s not a fan of mine. And yet, am I proud that I can probably sell a lot of tickets? Yeah—and I’m not going to be ashamed of my popularity.”

wedding songs

2005-10-22T18:11:15Z

i posted to the general rent category on CB, regarding plausible wedding songs, if by some miracle, my boyfriend actually realizes that he should put a ring on my finger. I have to make sure that there is something from the soundtrack on it.

In all seriousness, someone actually suggested "contact"! My grandmother would have a heart attack! I vote for the cover you reprise.

what do you guys think? Actually, now that I think about it, Love Heals might work, too (though I still want something from the OBC track).

So, ideas?

Karmiiiiiine

2005-10-16T14:58:32Z

I'm not exactly sure where to begin, but I posted in my LJ about Saturday so I'm just going to copy and paste the parts that aren't "so then I had Jamba Juice"

Cary was out and Jay went on as Roger. The first "voice mail" with Mark's mom had me confused. She had crazy hair with bleachedness and pink highlights and it was very un-Mark's mom-ish. I had my eyes glued to Karmine during "Rent" and when they weren't glued on her, I was looking at D'Monroe who noticed and raised his eyebrow or smiled or did something relatively in character at me. Interesting. "Rent" was pretty good, Jay and Matt did the funny thing where they look like 5-year olds whenever they face each other and Matt was playing with Jay's sweater. The looks Karmine and Justin exchange from across the stage make me laugh...hard. I'm not the biggest fan of Jay, so I didn't enjoy "Glory" too much...he was definitely good, just not my style. But his acting was great in "Light my Candle" even though he didn't do the handcuff dance (he made up for that in "Christmas bells"), but Karmine was adorable aaaaaaaaas always. The fucking camera tripod was in the way so I had to keep moving my head when she was on the floor looking for her bag of confectioner's sugar. Justin's adorable...the end. When Merle was setting up the scene for "Tango" I had my head resting in between Di and Nicole's seats, and that song was just unbelievable. She can't not laugh when she says "I fall for her still anyhow" the way Matt dances...it's too funny. "Out tonight" was obviously amazing but PEOPLE DON'T FUCKING CHEER LOUD ENOUGH. In the beginning of the song she's not singing, just tooling around up there to the music, so it seems like a natural place for people to scream...oh well. She was infuckingcredible and totally did the "eww cooties" thing where she wipes her mouth after Jay pushes her off of him. "I'll Cover You" was adorable because Justin and Destan are great. Much of the first act is a blur except for "Christmas bells"...they didn't put the hanging thing with all the squares on it on the table, oh well. The thing that hangs down from a pipe with a bottle on it to stage left of the moon kept shaking and being random. "Over the moon" Ava style was pretty good. They added the star to her crotch. In general, I have mixed feelings about Ava...I think she's good but ...meh. She kept us MOOing for a while, it was cute. "La Vie Boheme"...hmmmm. Amazing as usual, but Jay and Karmine didn't have the same chemistry as Cary and Karmine, which makes sense, but oh well. After the Musetta's Waltz situation Jay threw the pick and it hit Justin on the arm...I half expected him to bitch slap Jay. There was some random synthesizer/keyboard freak out during this and I saw the conductor go nuts with his arms to be like NOOOOOO. (ps- right after "the power blows" I love hearing the conductor scream "2! 3!" the end).
~ ~
OH MY GAWSH "SEASONS OF LOVE" HEY IT'S THE GIRL FROM AMERICAN IDOL OOOOH MY GAWSHHHH!!!!! THIS IS LIKE MY FAVORITE SONG. *throws up* But seriously, Destan's solo was really good and Frenchie always seems really into hers but people get so hyped up about her that I just sort of ignore it by now. "Happy New Year"....always a great song. OH. and the part when D'Monroe picks up Karmine (I'm blanking on when exactly this happens, but it stuck out so much) because she's so damn tiny, she's like FEET into the air and just sort of flings around and he twirls her. Also, her hair is so fucking huge. She's a tiny person and it's like madness up in there. Karmine definitely LEAPED into Jay though when they sort of spin around. I got up during Matt's schpiel before "Take Me Or Leave Me" to go to the bathroom but through the joys of there being no line, I was back before Merle started singing so it was under control. "Contact" was nucking futs. D'Monroe was like upside down on that gate thingy, that man has a LOT of energy and it's awesome, and it brought great joy to my eyes when Mayumi ripped off her track suit and wig and was all !!!!!!!!!. (I also didn't notice that she had a wig on until yesterday. I realized it was her lighter-colored hair underneath and had one of those "a HA" moments. I swear Matt was talking to Ava when they were under the sheet. I was like "look alive, Matt, eyes on the game". I think Karmine was crying for real as she was waiting to make her entrance for "Goodbye, Love" because she like wiped her nose with a tissue then stuck it in her pocket as she came onstage and I almost started crying. She's supposed to be crying but I think those were real tears and it broke my heart. When she flung her arm over the table after "Your Eyes" I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Then Jay had to go and wail "MIMIIIIIII" ... We jumped up like it was our job at the bows and Karmine saw me and smiled and I almost fell over backwards.
--
Stage Door was upsetting. First D'Monroe came out and we chatted for a while and he asked about school and stuff and was just amazing and sweet and damn that man is awesome and my new favorite. Heather came over and spoke to him too and it was a party up in there. I heard someone yelling my name and since there aren't 18million Sheiras, I was like "ahoy!" and Lindsay and Courtney were flagging me down because Karmine came out so I went over to that blob of people and was crushed when I saw her. Not like trample style, because that's what happened LATER THAT NIGHT, but I was so sad. I was just looking at her and after she took a picture with someone she waved or smiled or nodded her head or something and I was watching as she got mobbed. Then eventually she came and was like "hey" and I gave her a hug and the little wedding thingy we had for her and I had tears my eyes but it was under control. Ava was right there so we said hi to her and she was adorable.

Oh and some girl who I'm positive hasn't hit puberty yet sat in lotto seats with her sister who probably hasn't been through it either. I felt like a babysitter but just ignored them so it was under control :)

x-posted here and there

adultrent @ 2005-10-06T21:35:00

2005-10-07T01:38:41Z

The rest of my pictures from Karmine's party here

I gotta say...it's a good thing I had a "take $5 off a $15 or more purchase" coupon.

posted places.

For You

2005-10-04T02:55:12Z

And this was just from one roll...I have two more that will be ready on Thursday so they'll go up that night or Friday morning.

x-posted places

potential Virus

2005-10-02T15:41:40Z

I downloaded the RENT screensaver off the blog quite a while ago, and I don't even use it, and I've scanned for viruses several times since I
downloaded it but today when I scanned, it was the only result that came up. McAfee moved it to a Quarantine folder, but I went and deleted
it all over the place because the last thing I need is virus trouble in the middle of the semester. So...you might want to whip out that virus scanner/spyware/ad-aware software and check your computers.

x-posted because that's what the cool kids are doing.

adultrent @ 2005-10-01T13:18:00

2005-10-01T17:18:18Z

how did people feel about Dominique Roy as mimi?

adultrent @ 2005-09-30T10:31:00

2005-09-30T14:31:27Z

Well, I sat down last night and listened to the new RENT movie soundtrack track by track on headphones (so I could really really listen to it with no distractions) and I have some thoughts now! (I had a few before but I have changed my mind on some)

-First of all, I am SO used to the OBC, that during songs like "Rent" where they have taken out the dialogue, I keep adding it back in in my head like "Hello, Maureen? Your equipment won't work? Ok, alright I'll go!" Haha.

-Okay. Overall - I think this new soundtrack is AMAZING. People will knock it, people will compare it to the original, but overall - I think it's great! And honestly, with such beautiful material to work with, how could you go TOO wrong?

-It was (probably) my favorite song before, but I think the new "Take Me or Leave Me" might be even better than the original! It is UN-believable - in my opinion. After I heard it, I re-played it at least 3 times to hear it again. Tracie & Idina are compeletely on point and they sound absolutely amazing.

-Rosario sounds great, way better than the online clips I heard before. (Is it just me or does the CD sound much better than the clips on the RENT movie site? I know it's the same thing, but for some reason it sounds better to me). I think "Out Tonight" sounds absolutely great. More power than I expected. She brings Mimi a slight touch of vulnerability that is nice though.

-Anthony Rapp sounds just the same pretty much. Idina and Taye sound even better than before. I feel like Idina's really grown as a singer (not that she wasn't amazing before) and she wants to show that off. Tracie is amazing! Great choice to use her for Joanne, I think.

-Love Heals is a great song! I like it. I am pleased with it.

-A couple of NEGATIVES though - not much - but whoever said yesterday that the instrumentals in "Light My Candle" sound like a MIDI file is COMPLETELY right. I laughed thinking about that. It really does - it sounds cheap. Why?

-Also, did they digitize Rosario's voice a little bit in Out Tonight? Like use some kind of weird effect on some of the notes? Do I hear something funny in there, or is it just me?

-The last point - I am a little bit disappointed with "La Vie Boheme" - One of my favorite songs in the show - I'm sure with the visual in the movie - it will be great. BUT - does anyone else feel that the whole number sounds a little too "rehearsed" and a little too "polished" -- do you know what I'm trying to say here? The original feels so raw and so spontaneous... this one sounds a little more contrived. And, I don't like the track starting out with "Who Died?" - But again I'm sure when I see the film I will feel differently about that. It's awkward for me right now though.

ANYWAY:: WHAT A LONG POST!! If you got through it, good for you and thanks! :) I have more thoughts but they aren't all coming to me right now. Please share your thoughts! It's fun to talk about this with other RENTheads when I'm at work!!

adultrent @ 2005-09-23T13:47:00

2005-09-23T17:51:47Z

x-posted

adultrent @ 2005-09-22T22:22:00

2005-09-23T02:23:03Z

all right. what's going on here?

there's actually a RENT THEME available under the download section on the sony page. it won't work for me. help!

adultrent @ 2005-09-21T13:59:00

2005-09-21T18:04:26Z

Ok so I made a color bar. Except it's not really a color bar because it lacks the rainbow thing, and it's huge because I made it in paintbrush and just tried to make all the pictures the same size... I used pictures from Bryant Park this summer, but the one of Jesse is from one of the pictures on the RENT site, where he's dancing with Adam, and there's one of Jonathan in the middle Though, I'm not sure why I bothered to explain this...you're all smart people. It's not very good, so I really couldn't care less if people think it belongs on a street curb...but this is what happens when I'm bored and it's 10am :)

(I have the full-size pictures of all of the ones where the Bryant Park pictures came from, if anyone is interested in seeing them)

Soundtrack Question

2005-09-20T01:04:59Z

So, one of my friends mentioned something to me last night about the soundtrack having different cards (or something) inside that have pictures or different characters. Does anyone know anything about this?

lightbulb

2005-09-18T18:58:29Z

I go to school in Northampton, MA and there's no Tower or Virgin (haha LOVE the rocky horror reference every time) but I had to go to Amherst for a while for a class so I was walking along and I found a comic store that also sold CDs/DVDs. I asked them if they were getting the RENT soundtrack on the 27th and after a confused exchange between me and the guy, he concluded that yes, they would be getting it. I asked if I could reserve a copy/buy it now and he said they don't do that but that they'd be getting a lot in so it wouldn't be a problem. Sure. So I keep walking and find ANOTHER CD store and they had a dry-erase board in the window. It had a list of soundtracks that would be coming out in the month of September and of course RENT was there under September 27th. I went in and asked if I could reserve a copy and she said YES! I thought she was kidding at first : /

So for only $2 I reserved my copy of the soundtrack...if there are small CD stores in your area, you might want to check them out to see if you can pre-order it. I wouldn't have been able to get to a Tower/Virgin until the weekend and we all know that would be scary.

..just a thought :)

i love this community...that's what i've decided.

2005-09-14T20:43:17Z

- playbills from 11 shows (all in NYC), from sometime in the fall of '02 until present, but I always grab extra playbills, so I have far more than 11
- a few from when I saw it in June of this summer until now are signed, I decided that having four playbills that look EXACTLY the same are not as cool as picture upon picture :)
- rolls and rolls and rolls of pictures from the stage door
- two of the black short-sleeved shirts "RENT"
- white tank top "RENT"
- "no day but today" dog tag
- Bible
- "moo with me" cow
- OBCR
- OBC window card thing
- a picture with Daphne after a concert she did at the PVPA (Rachael...it was NUTS. I must talk to you about this). It was last year so obviously it's not from the show, but it's still Daphne
- signed headshot from the same night as when I took the picture with Daphne
- pictures from Bryant Park on August 4th from this summer, no autographs/pictures WITH the cast (and a ridiculously close-up picture of Rosario), but I have five rolls of pictures of them in the park..don't know if that counts since it's all filmified
- a picture with Rosario from one night after Two Gentlemen of Verona this summer
- the DVD from PBS's Broadway thing with the RENT segment

the end :)

Who am I most like?

2005-09-13T14:28:42Z

Well, if you ask my wife, she says Maureen. I'm more subtle about my Diva-hood than Reenie, but it's still there.

We do "Take Me or Leave Me" every time it comes on, because it honestly is us. She's so much JoAnne it hurts. And when Reenie is in the background saying "A control freak... a snob but overattentive... a loveable droll GEEK... and ANAL RETENTIVE" I get SUCH joy shouting it out... because it's mostly true about her. lol

We also fight just as much, but love each other just as much. :)

Of course, Wifelet is really part Mimi, part Angel, mostly JoAnne... but I could take a year to explain all of that.

I also really identify with Mark. I'm the people watcher, always on the outside, very much a loner (I know, how can a loner be a diva... it's a symptom of the struggle in me to not take up any space in the world while taking up too much.) and always feel like while I can pretty much survive anything, I am weak in many ways.

thought i'd also give this a go

2005-09-13T06:53:21Z

which character... hmm... i find this hard to answer.

in some ways, i'm a bit of Angel. Looking after my friends, coz their really important to me. but i'm hardly a male cross dresser....

i'm also a bit like mimi. compared to my friends i'm younger, but "born to bad." but i don't do smack....

i'm a bit maureen. i can be a drama queen, and i tend to push other people away by being a bitch. i also love to be loud about issues... and while i'm definetly no lesbian performance artist, i'm pretty political.

to some degree, like Joanne, i like order in certain areas of my life, and i struggle. but i'm certainly no harvard lawyer!

what can i say... i'm a little eckleptic! :o) multiple personalities!

I didn't want Rachael to throw a pumpkin at me, so I'm doing this now :)

2005-09-12T21:19:00Z

As far as identifying with a character strictly based on lines and what happens during the show, I probably identify most with Mark. For the most part, I don't like confronting people and he seems to run off stage or avoid situations like that (until the whole "What You Own" situation happens, that is) all together. Mark seems to have a lot inside that he only shows when he's around certain folks. He seems less...emo...at times, than Roger, and emo gets on my nerves when it's in excess. I think they've all got a bit of it, but nothing screams emo to me more than someone sitting by themselves playing the guitar/trying to write a song. *Emo Alert*

But. It's been discussed that Matt is getting too confident in his role which explains when he goes overboard, and being overconfident is not something I think I posess (posses?). If I'm going by actors though, there are some qualities about Kelly that make me connect to her a lot. Some of the facial expressions she has on her face before "Take Me Or Leave Me" just make me giggle and I can't put my finger on it, but there's something she does during "La Vie Boheme" that I can definitely see myself doing. And no, it's not mooning an entire audience of people. ...it's some time when she just bursts into laughter, in character, but the way Kelly delivers it makes me love her more than I do to begin with. Also, I can't dance. Neither can Merle or Cary during La Vie Boheme (sorry for the constant references to the current cast... I never saw the OBC and I don't remember the casts I saw before, except Jai and Mel. Mel was WAY scary and Jai...yeah. cute, but yeah.) Maybe it's their characters that they can't dance in that song, but the way they attempt to move around....I can't even PRETEND to dance like that : P

Character Identification

2005-09-12T18:32:54Z

I identify with Joanne. I am not African American, but I am in my 30s, educated, and often in the role of "earth or den mother" for my group of friends. Always a Scout Leader who never gets to "play" much.

Before my current relationship, I was attracted to the "Maureens" of the world and I ALWAYS went back for more!

In many ways, I see Joanne as the steadying voice of reason in Rent. She is often disregarded because is not outrageous or creative, but she rebels in her own ways ("no Doc Martens this time...and a bra..."), like I do. I tend to follow the rules, but I am the one who would bring the rope - and the quiet comments that "technically you're squatters - there's hope" (suggesting that they are only technically breaking the law, but willing to help anyway).

adultrent @ 2005-09-12T12:23:00

2005-09-12T16:21:32Z

It seems like most of the members here are very close to 20. Was anyone else here actually a fan back when it opened? Did anyone else see the OBC? (Just curious.) Is anyone else even close to 30? An older entry about my entire experience with RENT is here. Some old school RENThead pictures are here.

adultrent @ 2005-09-11T18:41:00

2005-09-11T22:41:07Z

which character do you identify most with? why?

i'd love it if you'd comment with an actual posting, so we can all reply to each other.

i'll answer with my own lengthy reply soon!